You HAVE more options. You just decided to accept a system where those options don’t matter at all.
So it’s my fault that the options don’t matter because I can’t do anything about it?
Partly, if you happen to be someone who keeps voting to perpetuate this same system, then yes.
There’s no voting option to get rid of the system. I don’t understand these vague suggestions that I should pick some other option. If you are suggesting not voting then that has no impact and neither does 3rd party.
If you are suggesting not voting then that has no impact and neither does 3rd party.
That’s based on YOUR perspective. If your goal is simply to win every election then you are correct, but if your intent is to show that you will still vote, but not for the candidates or platform that the mainstream establishment is proposing to you than voting third-party is far better than not voting. Additionally, if people actually acted less defeatist before caving to the establishment and instead voted for a third party, then there would be a far better chance of the third party getting traction as the Democrat party Absorbs the Republican party.
Also, depending on what you want, voting for a third-party candidate may just better represent you. That’'s more than enough to vote third party. The absolute bare minimum political action you can choose to express your political values is to vote. Actions tend to speak louder than words, anyways. When people fail to do that, then It’s clear that they don’t even know what they want.
What makes you think you can’t do anything about it?
The people who benefit from the system are the same people who control the system. What do you suggest?
Go into politics — become part of the problem so you can become part of the solution.
Yeah, specially in the US where money rules the actual debate. If you don’t have a few millions to spare on a fancy election parade… Don’t even bother.
That’s way politics is the war of the rich and why all multi billion dollar companies feel safe in the US.
Not everyone is cut out or in a position to go into politics.
Unhelpful
They should really talk about this when there isn’t a possibly world changing election going on. It’s almost like they’re doing this to get people to waste their vote on a third party. Talk ranked choice voting the day after the election and don’t shut up about it until the government listens.
I’m a pretty far left progressive and I get downvoted for saying this, but unfortunately I’ve seen firsthand the Russian propaganda (your vote doesn’t matter; both sides are terrible; protest vote to a third party; don’t vote for genocide) being basically indistinguishable from a lot of actual progressive social media posts. Of course, all these things are arguably or definitely true, depending on your circumstance, many things need to change ASAP, it feels like shit voting for someone who supports some horrible things, and yet following any of this advice (particularly in a swing state) supports Russian and conservative interests. It’s frustrating seeing a lot of friends posting things I technically agree with if we were discussing them privately, but post them in public social media posts which essentially make them mouthpieces for neocons who spread the exact same rhetoric to younger voters by appealing to their altruism. Most of them ARE still voting for Harris and understand the “lesser of two evils” thing, but who knows how many people they have convinced to not vote, or throw it away, by contributing to the “everything sucks” echo chamber.
Look, the train is heading full speed toward the edge of a cliff, but we can at least try to slow it down with what we have. We have the option of actually using the next four years to attempt to gradually unfuck things, or we can just give up and wait until things are even more fucked four years from now before getting angry again that the next person on whatever “the left” means then represents our interests even less than the previous candidate. Realistically, this is how it’s always going to be, because the majority of Americans don’t really care about this stuff until a few months before an election, but at the bare minimum it’s so important to make people realize we need to make the most out of even a small modicum of what we have that we can work with.
I’ve seen firsthand the Russian propaganda (your vote doesn’t matter; both sides are terrible; protest vote to a third party; don’t vote for genocide) being basically indistinguishable from a lot of actual progressive social media posts.
Have you actually seen this Russian propaganda firsthand? Where’s your evidence? Perhaps virtually all of them have been actual progressive social media posts and virtually none of them Russian propaganda. https://lemmy.ml/post/21753853/14538328
- Wall Street Journal: Mueller Doesn’t Find Trump Campaign Conspired With Russia
- Jacobin: Democrats and Mainstream Media Were the Real Kremlin Assets
- Washington Post: FEC fines DNC, Clinton for violating rules in funding Steele dossier
- Washington Post: Russian trolls on Twitter had little influence on 2016 voters
- Jacobin: It Turns Out Hillary Clinton, Not Russian Bots, Lost the 2016 Election
- Matt Taibbi: Move Over, Jayson Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, the New King of Media Fraud The Twitter Files reveal that one of the most common news sources of the Trump era was a scam, making ordinary American political conversations look like Russian spywork
- Jacobin: Why the Twitter Files Are in Fact a Big Deal On the Left, there’s been a temptation to dismiss the revelations about Twitter’s internal censorship system that have emerged from the so-called Twitter Files project. But that would be a mistake: the news is important and the details are alarming.
- MSNBC Repeats Hamilton 68 Lies 279 Times in 11 Minutes
- Jeff Gerth at Columbia Journalism Review on Russiagate: Editor’s Note | Part one | Part two | Part three | Part four
- Matt Taibbi: WMD, Part II: CIA “Cooked The Intelligence” To Hide That Russia Favored Clinton, Not Trump In 2016
- Chris Hedges: Why Russiagate Won’t Go Away
Totally circumstantial (and admittedly not clear in my above post), but what I’ve seen is not originally from posts, but all targeted spam emails to a government institution (which I can’t share unfortunately, but I fully realize “trust me bro” is not useful on the internet - though if Lemmy was bigger, other people with similar jobs have definitely seen the same). I definitely have no evidence of someone specifically reading these emails (the vast majority of which were caught and filtered by the spam blocker) and reposting them to social media, just pointing out that I saw a lot of the same things. I have seen some of your links but not others and read every one of these, and it’s all encouraging to know that, hopefully, the foreign influencers are doing a really shitty job. The Dems run some really bad candidates, but we all collectively (myself included) need to work harder to fix this shit on years 1-3 and not just year 4. Personally, I’m voting for the best option we have at the moment, but like… I really do totally get it if you don’t.
I live in a deep $COLOR state, not a swing state, so my vote has no effect on the Electoral College anyway.
Yeah, I fully support protest votes against dysfunctional two-party systems in deep $COLOR states - that’s where a lot of people don’t vote because they think they “don’t make a difference” but that’s how little trends start to form over time. Just gotta do what we can with what we have.
Please don’t let apathy guide you on this. It matters we at least keep showing up to vote even if the most we get out of it is a higher likelihood of being summoned for jury duty.
And for the people that prefer to not live in cognitive dissonance?
Well it’s either vote for the candidate least likely to fuck the world up, or possibly don’t get the option to vote at all for next election.
It is possible but do you believe it is a strong possibility, and if so does that make Thomas Crooks a martyr?
No but I think Trump could’ve ended up being martyred instead. Trump needs to lose on the ballot to discredit his ideals, otherwise the MAGA movement will have him as a symbol to make a more permanent political movement.
Move to a different country?
We get what we get.
And we all get upset.
I voted third party and couldn’t be happier with my choice. The genocide supporters have already become the fascist that they claim they’re trying to protect you from.
As long as you feel smug, fuck the results.
